Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Engineering and Evolution of Synthetic Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV) Gene Therapy Vectors via DNA Family Shuffling
Published on: April 2, 2012
The chimpanzee alpha-fetoprotein-encoding gene shows structural similarity to that of gorilla but distinct
H Nishio1, P E Gibbs, P P Minghetti
1Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Riverside 92521, USA.
Abstract:
The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) alpha-fetoprotein (AFP)-encoding gene (AFP) spans 18,867 bp from the transcription start point to the polyadenylation site, and the nucleotide (nt) sequence reveals that the gene is composed of 15 exons, which are symmetrically placed within three domains of AFP. In addition, we report 3121 bp of 5'-flanking sequence and 4886 bp of 3'-flanking sequence. The entire 26,874 bp of contiguous DNA reported here was determined from three overlapping lambda phage clones. The deduced polypeptide chain is composed of a 19-amino-acid (aa) putative leader peptide, followed by 590 aa of the mature protein. The sequence of chimpanzee AFP was compared with those of the previously published human AFP [Gibbs et al., Biochemistry 26 (1987) 1332-1343] and gorilla AFP [Ryan et al., Genomics 9 (1991) 60-72]. At the aa level, the human AFP differs from the chimpanzee at 6 aa positions and from the gorilla at 4 aa positions; the chimpanzee and gorilla differ at 8 aa positions. There are four types of repetitive sequence elements (X, Alu, Xba and Kpn) in the introns and flanking regions of chimpanzee AFP, and they are located in orthologous positions in the human and gorilla AFP. However, one specific Alu and one Xba repeat in introns 4 and 7, respectively, found in human AFP, are absent from orthologous positions in chimpanzee and gorilla AFP. These two repeats represent human-specific novelties that arose from recent DNA transpositions in primate phylogeny.
Related Concept Videos
Protein Families
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons
Synteny and Evolution
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral chromosome underwent...
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved DNA...
Exon Recombination
Exon shuffling follows “splice frame rules.” Each exon has three reading...
General Transcription Factors

